Procurement Associate
Career Opportunities: Procurement Associate
Duty station: Country Office, Monrovia
🚩 Vacancy Announcement n°: 827410
📢 Job Title: Procurement Associate
📢 Job Grade: SC-6
📌Type of Contract: Service Contract
➡️ Unit / Division: Supply Chain
📍 Duty Station: Country Office, Monrovia
➡️ Duration: 1 year (Renewable based on funding & Operational needs)
⏰ Closing date: 08 June 2023, midnight (Liberia Time)
About WFP
The United Nations World Food Programme is the world's largest humanitarian agency fighting hunger worldwide. The mission of WFP is to help the world achieve Zero Hunger in our lifetimes. Every day, WFP works worldwide to ensure that no child goes to bed hungry and that the poorest and most vulnerable, particularly women and children, can access the nutritious food they need.
To learn more about WFP, visit our website and follow us on social media to keep up with our latest news: LinkedIn, Instagram, Facebook, Twitter.
Background and Purpose of the Assignment
WFP has been providing assistance in Liberia since 1968 through its emergency and development activities. To ensure effective planning and better-informed responses in supporting the implementation of Liberia’s Pro-poor Agenda for Prosperity and Development, WFP’s Country Strategic Plan (2019-2023) is designed to align with the government’s priorities alongside the United Nations Sustainable Development Cooperation Framework (UNSDCF) for 2020-2024 to create better synergy of actions with sister UN agencies.
The current five-year development portfolio of WFP Liberia includes social protection safety nets, such as home-grown school feeding, livelihood, and capacity strengthening support through its Food Assistance projects, stimulating local food production, and support the Government in enhancing the efficiency of food value chains in Liberia. Including emergency preparedness and response.
WFP is leveraging school feeding with a solid HGSF component to deliver climate-smart livelihood support activities that provide smallholder farmers, particularly rural women, with reliable and sustainable markets. This includes strengthening vulnerable smallholder farmers’ resilience to climate-related and other recurrent shocks through the creation or regeneration of productive community assets.
WFP aims to strengthen food and nutrition security through school feeding, and social protection measures and assists in strengthening the national capacity of Liberia to own and implement hunger solutions.
The Procurement Associate position at WFP Country office provides coordination, administrative services and research to support efficient and effective procurement services. WFP Liberia Country Office seeks potential candidates to support the Supply Chain team of the office. The post holder will report to the Head of the Supply Chain Unit.
What will you do in this position?
- Provide operational coordination and administrative services, to support procurement projects and activities, following standard processes and contributing to the effective procurement of goods and services.
- Identify and recommend potential suppliers, and compile data/documents to support the selection of suppliers, ensuring standard processes are followed.
- Review, record and prioritize purchasing requests, and provide support to requisitioners, in order to support the procurement of appropriate goods and services, at lowest cost to WFP.
- Contribute to negotiations with new suppliers on terms and conditions of orders, alongside a senior officer, in order to obtain the best terms and lowest costs for WFP.
- Prepare Purchase Orders, contracts and any supporting documentation for approval by the appropriate stakeholder, and approve purchases within delegated authority, to enable the swift purchase of goods and services.
- Resolve issues related to delivered goods, using initiative, liaising with all parties and following standard processes, to ensure timely and accurate resolution of problems.
- Research, collect, and analyze data in order to produce reports to enable informed decision-making by Procurement Officers and consistency of information presented to stakeholders.
- Manage updates and further develop databases and records, to ensure information is accurate, organized, and available for others to access, and supports reporting requirements.
- Maintain relationships with internal counterparts, to support the alignment of procurement activities with wider programmes and ensure a coherent approach to meeting food assistance needs.
- Supervise the work of support staff, providing practical advice and guidance, to ensure individual and team objectives are delivered to agreed standards and deadlines.
- Follow standard emergency preparedness practices to support WFP to quickly respond and deploy food and needed resources to affected areas at the onset of the crisis.
- Perform other relevant duties as required.
Why work with us?
➡️ Meaningful and impactful careers:
Our day-to-day work makes a difference in the lives of the people we serve
➡️ Continuous learning and training:
We provide learning tools for our staff to continually develop their careers
➡️ Multicultural and stimulating work environment:
We encourage gender and cultural diversity to make our teams stronger
Join us to make a difference in Liberia!!
To join us in saving lives, changing lives, you will have for…
Education:
Minimum Qualifications:
Completion of secondary school education. A post-secondary certificate in the related functional area.
Experience & Knowledge:
- Minimum of six years of experience in Procurement or related field.
- Demonstrated familiarity with locally purchased commodities/goods/services (e.g., cash-based, in-kind donations).
- Experience conducting supplier research and coordinating with retailers, wholesalers, and traders.
- Demonstrated knowledge of procurement processes and linkages with other operations (e.g., logistics).
Language: Fluency (level C) in English language.
Before you apply…
WFP seeks candidates of the highest integrity and professionalism who share our humanitarian principles. Selection of staff is made on a competitive basis, and we are committed to promoting an inclusive work environment in which diversity is valued and where no form of discrimination is tolerated. We aim to achieve parity in our teams in Liberia. Qualified female applicants and individuals with disabilities are especially encouraged to apply.
All employment decisions are made on the basis of organizational needs, job requirements, merit, and individual qualifications. WFP is committed to providing an inclusive work environment free of sexual exploitation and abuse, all forms of discrimination, any kind of harassment, sexual harassment, and abuse of authority. Therefore, all selected candidates will undergo rigorous reference and background checks.
No appointment under any kind of contract will be offered to members of the UN Advisory Committee on Administrative and Budgetary Questions (ACABQ), International Civil Service Commission (ICSC), FAO Finance Committee, WFP External Auditor, WFP Audit Committee, Joint Inspection Unit (JIU) and other similar bodies within the United Nations system with oversight responsibilities over WFP, both during their service and within three years of ceasing that service.
